and their closets pillaged.  At the doctor’s—­did you ever hear of such a thing?  I caught one big fellow devouring the soap.  But the cellar was the place where they did most mischief; we could hear them from upstairs smashing the bottles and yelling like demons, and they drew the spigots of the casks, so that the place was flooded with wine; when they came out their hands were red with the good wine they had spilled.  And to show what happens, men when they make such brutes of themselves:  a soldier found a large bottle of laudanum and drank it all down, in spite of Monsieur Dalichamp’s efforts to prevent him.  The poor wretch was in horrible agony when I came away; he must be dead by this time.”

A great shudder ran through her, and she put her hand to her eyes to shut out the horrid sight.

“No, no!  I cannot bear it; I saw too much!”

Father Fouchard had crossed the road and stationed himself at the open window where he could hear, and the tale of pillage made him uneasy; he had been told that the Prussians paid for all they took; were they going to start out as robbers at that late day?  Maurice and Jean, too, were deeply interested in those details about an enemy whom the girl had seen, and whom they had not succeeded in setting eyes on in their whole month’s campaigning, while Honore, pensive and with dry, parched lips, was conscious only of the sound of her voice; he could think of nothing save her and the misfortune that had parted them.

Just then the door of the adjoining room was opened, and little Charlot appeared.  He had heard his mother’s voice, and came trotting into the apartment in his nightgown to give her a kiss.  He was a chubby, pink little urchin, large and strong for his age, with a thatch of curling, straw-colored hair and big blue eyes.  Silvine shivered at his sudden appearance, as if the sight of him had recalled to her mind the image of someone else that affected her disagreeably.  Did she no longer recognize him, then, her darling child, that she looked at him thus, as if he were some evocation of that horrid nightmare!  She burst into tears.

“My poor, poor child!” she exclaimed, and clasped him wildly to her breast, while Honore, ghastly pale, noted how strikingly like the little one was to Goliah; the same broad, pink face, the true Teutonic type, in all the health and strength of rosy, smiling childhood.  The son of the Prussian, the Prussian, as the pothouse wits of Remilly had styled him!  And the French mother, who sat there, pressing him to her bosom, her heart still bleeding with the recollection of the cruel sights she had witnessed that day!

“My poor child, be good; come with me back to bed.  Say good-night, my poor child.”

She vanished, bearing him away.  When she returned from the adjoining room she was no longer weeping; her face wore its customary expression of calm and courageous resignation.

It was Honore who, with a trembling voice, started the conversation again.